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Authors: Ellen Mitchell

Beyond Tears: Living After Losing a Child (13 page)

BOOK: Beyond Tears: Living After Losing a Child

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Rita: “I didn’t want to take anything. I thought maybe it would delay my grief and not let me walk through the center of it.”

Audrey: “That’s what I was afraid of, too. But, I took it and sometimes when I would go to the cemetery I couldn’t cry and that made me feel worse. So I finally stopped the medication. Before I took it the tears wouldn’t stop. After I took it the tears couldn’t come.”

Barbara E.: “I didn’t take medication the first two years and I cried pretty much the whole time. Then I started taking medication and I’m still on it. When I try to get off it, I just start crying. Being on it keeps me even-tempered; I have more control over myself.”

Barbara G.: “I am on anti-depressants and have been before. I tried doing without them and found I could not cope. I am not ashamed of this. Life has dealt us a tremendous blow; whatever I have to do to remain functional, I will do.”

We used to identify ourselves as mothers. After we lost our children that identity was shaken, but we realize we are still mothers. And, despite what we have been through, we have emerged also as teachers, business women, career women, counselors, wives, grandmothers, sisters, daughters and friends. We each have our own interests. We look different, we act differently and we think differently.

Once we realize and accept without guilt that we are so much more
than bereaved mothers, we are a long way toward coping with our grief. We cannot say we are strong enough to deal with whatever comes our way. If there is one thing we have learned it is to expect the unexpected.

And so we manage. We go from day to day. The transition is subtle. Like the twelve-step program for addicts of all types, we take it one small step at a time. We know we have survived the worst that life can offer and in that alone there is some strength. Let others who do not know any better speak of “closure.” There is no such thing in regard to a dead child. You never close that part of your life. It molds you forevermore.

Just as the births of our children made us who we were as young mothers, so their deaths are a large part of who we are now. We accept that. But, we concentrate on moving forward. We have no intention of dying. We may not always admit that, but how else to explain the fact that we go for annual mammograms and buckle our seat belts when we drive. We owe it to our children, both dead and surviving, to move on.

ANDREA LEVINE

For several months, I had been having fleeting thoughts that someone in our family would die. I tried to put such notions aside, but could not and found them most disturbing.

On an unusually mild Saturday afternoon in December of 1987, Andrea and I went shopping for a new outfit for her. My daughter truly had a passion for shopping. We joked that her motto was “out of the bag and onto my back.” But it was not only for herself that Andrea shopped. It was usually Andrea who thought to buy the greeting cards, and it was she who reminded her older brother and sister when there was a family birthday or anniversary to be recognized with a gift.

As we walked, she told me to remember that she was an organ donor. I looked at her and wondered what she was thinking. “So what,” was all I said.

That evening Andrea left to drive to New Jersey to visit a friend. Typical of mothers everywhere, I cautioned her to start out early and drive carefully.

“Ma,” she said, “don’t worry about me; worry about the other drivers.” Those were to be the last words Andrea ever said to me.

At 11 P.M. a police officer phoned and said Andrea had been in a serious car accident in Bloomfield, New Jersey. When our children were young, we had always told them to phone if they had any difficulty and when we could hear their voice we would know all was well. I asked the police officer if I could speak to Andrea. When he said I could not, I knew we were up against something serious.

Andrea was the youngest of our three children. She was caring and sensitive with a warm, winning personality and a ready smile. She made and kept friends with ease and was in constant touch seemingly with all of them at once by telephone. The image of her talking on two phones simultaneously will forever bring a smile to my face.

She was able to pick and choose her friends wisely because she had an uncanny ability to cut to the chase. She sensed who was genuine and who was not. She was a dark-haired, cute and tiny dynamo whom we
nicknamed “Wheels” because she was always spinning, talking, going and doing. When Andrea was at home, the house was always busy.

She was our family personality and she made us laugh with such pranks as filling the refrigerator with family shoes when she found it depressingly empty after her big brother left for college.

Apparently, Andrea lost her way that December night. She was alone in the car and in the wrong place at the wrong time when a young man of eighteen plowed into the driver’s side of her car. There were no drugs or alcohol involved but it was his first time at the wheel. He was just an inexperienced driver who walked away without a scratch.

We rushed down to the hospital trauma center in New Jersey where Andrea had been taken and was already undergoing surgery. Perhaps she knew we were on our way because she was still alive when we arrived, but it was awhile before we could see her.

We sat in a small waiting room hoping and praying for good news. Finally a doctor and two nurses came in. The doctor told us in rambling fashion that Andrea’s surgery had not gone well. I asked him to get to the point, and he told us that Andrea’s liver had ruptured and there was nothing they could do to save her.

I recall looking behind me to see who else was in that little room because I could not believe the doctor was speaking to us. At such a time, your mind and body separate, you feel weightless. The shock is so incomprehensible that numbness settles in as if to protect you from something too horrendous to absorb.

They wheeled Andrea down for us to see her. She still wore the shower cap she had worn during the surgery, and there was fresh blood coming from her nose … . These terrible last images remain forever engraved on our hearts and minds.

It was at that moment that an incredibly insensitive nurse or orderly stepped up to place an identification tag on Andrea’s toe. The social worker cautioned her that this was not the appropriate time or place.

Although Andrea had already been pronounced dead, I knew she would know we were there to say good-bye. I touched her and kissed her and held her soft sweet hand. I felt enormous love, sadness and tenderness,
and I felt very weak. I do not think I will ever again feel that way. We agreed to donate Andrea’s corneas in line with what she had told me just that morning was her wish. God, how far away that morning seemed as we agreed to carry out her final wish.

We left the hospital, my husband Mel at the wheel, his tears flowing. I never cried; I never screamed. I sat paralyzed.

Andrea’s sister Abbe, her brother Barry and Barry’s fiancee, Patty, helped us through the awful chore of making the funeral arrangements. I picked out the coffin and the clothes that my dear child would sleep in for the rest of her life. We sent over a photo of the family to be placed in the coffin. I would have loved to include a telephone … Andrea’s favorite instrument.

That night at the funeral chapel we were an intact family for the last time. As long as her coffin was open, I was able to function. Abbe and Barry both eulogized their sister before the standing-room-only crowd at her funeral service at the temple the next day. Andrea was not a religious person, but she would have loved that crowd.

At the age of twenty-two, Andrea was an undiscovered treasure. As we left her at the cemetery, I looked back and saw a shadow of myself at her graveside. I knew I would never leave her. Part of me would always be there at her side. I left the cemetery a different person.

I visited Andrea’s grave frequently those first two years. I was obsessed with getting her stone in place. It reads, “For your caring, humor, friendship and love. For this we miss you deeply.”

Andrea and Mel had shared so many precious times and experiences. She worked with Mel at his business after she graduated from college. After her death, he could not go back to work without friends escorting him. We were all very concerned about him.

As for myself, Andrea and I shared a beautifully close mother-daughter bond. Despite the fact that I was the mother and she the daughter, she possessed a wisdom beyond her short years, and in some ways I looked to her as my mentor. Perhaps she still fills that role. With Andrea’s death, I have lost my best friend.

Phyllis Levine

Six

Holidays, Birthdays, Anniversaries

H
olidays are hell. There is no escaping that sad fact. Holidays, birthdays and certain anniversaries that used to hold precious meaning for us and for our families are now times when the memories are almost unbearable.

The first of everything is the worst of everything. We all dreaded the coming of the first holiday, the first birthday, the first death anniversary. In the beginning we were for the most part frozen on those “first” days. We were incapable of doing anything, or if we did act it was as if by rote.

Rita: “At that first Christmas, the whole family went through the motions. I thought to put up a tree to give some light to my younger son’s life. My husband did not want to do that, so he brought home a tree that resembled a broomstick with arms. There were no surprise gifts. Our life was in a plain brown wrapper.”

Over time, we have learned that the best way to survive these torturous holidays is to develop mechanisms that will carry us through them or, better still, find ways to avoid them completely and allow them to pass unmarked and as quietly as possible.

Unfortunately, our society finds such behavior almost unthinkable. Americans make much of holidays, so much so that we seem at times to slide simply from celebrating one “special” occasion to preparing for the next, and always with great fanfare. Labor Day barbecues have hardly ended and the toys of summer been stashed away than the stores overflow with table decorations for Thanksgiving … the family feast and a day of giving thanks. Christmas and Chanukah, the days that brought such wonder to our childrens’ eyes, are anticipated with celebratory glee for months by the general public. Signs and symbols for those holidays are out and all around us when we are scarcely into October.

Mother’s Day and Father’s Day are their own particular form of heartbreak. Images flood back over us … a toddler’s hand opening to disclose a lopsided clay heart made especially for Mommy, a small son’s painstakingly printed big block letters expressing love on a Father’s Day card. Mother’s Day and Father’s Day can no longer exist for us, even if we have other children.

Maddy: “Neill was buried on Father’s Day. How ironic that his father and stepfather are now forever united on that day by their grief.”

We will mark those days in some way and at some other time with surviving children and grandchildren. But, never again will it be with the traditional flowers, gifts and, of course, the cards for every occasion imaginable that the greeting card industry has plotted for us. Some of us are even repulsed by greeting cards.

Barbara E.: “I no longer send cards. I found that signing three names instead of four broke my heart. So, I just stopped.”

Audrey: “One of the hardest things is picking a card in the store. The words mother, father or daughter smack me in the face.”

Carol: “And those entire family photo cards that people send us. How insensitive can they be.”

Rita: “Receiving cards can be just bizarre … ridiculous cards wishing us joy.”

Then there are the unsolicited catalogues that flood our mailboxes: Buy for the holidays, decorate every room in your home for the holidays, dress for the holidays, prepare for the holidays.

The media is our enemy when it comes to celebration time. When the television, the radio, newspapers and magazines are not delivering news of the grim world situation to our living rooms and doorsteps, they are in holiday mode. Where will Americans be traveling this upcoming holiday? What should we be buying as gifts this year? What styles are in for the holiday season?

Everyone is in a rush to celebrate, while we are in a rush to hide from what for others is family time … intact family time. We are no longer intact; we can no longer celebrate.

What can we do? We must get past these days, year after year after year. We survive in different ways. We rely on those friends who also are bereaved because they can fully understand what we are going through and realize that the agony does not cease with time. We cherish close friends, bereaved and otherwise, who care enough to call us and commiserate on a particular occasion, or who care enough to let us alone. They know us well and know our needs at these times that jar our memories.

Over the years, we have tried to lose ourselves in mindless activity by running here, there and everywhere. We would go away to try to escape, but cannot find any place to hide from memories. So we attempt to replace the loss that has affected our lives by giving to someone else; we seek to erase the ugliness of what has happened with something beautiful. But it is hard, very hard.

Perhaps the best and simplest way we can go about surviving the holidays that come so often and with such fanfare is to find a way to let the death of our child be a part of it. Their deaths are something we must live with forevermore, and so they must become part of special occasions if we are to mark such occasions at all.

Ariella: “Bob and I now give each other cards and gifts that include Michael. Bob signs his cards Mike and Dad, I sign mine Mom and Michael.”

We feel and accept our children’s presence very strongly on those days. We have to accept the fact that these special days will always be accompanied by great pain for us. We may rail against that, but it is the only way we can endure and wake up on the following morning with yet another holiday celebration behind us instead of looming before us.

Phyllis: “Rosh Hashanah ushers in the New Year. On that day
The Book of Life
is opened, and ten days later on Yom Kippur it is sealed. In that time, it is determined who will live and who will die in the coming year. For Andrea, the book was slammed shut. The holiday has become my enemy. I feel I am fighting single-handedly against an invisible force. It overwhelms me. All I can do is pray for Andrea that she is safe.”

“The Yom Kippur service ends in Yiskor when we say the prayers for the dead in our families. I choose to sit by myself and not greet anyone. I sit and think who I have become. I think that my old-time friends don’t even know the person I am now. I do not think about my mother or father or anyone else, I only think about Andrea.”

“Does the pain get better? No!!!! The pain softens. How do I explain that? You can stay in bed and become immobilized with your grief, or you can choose to land on your feet. My friends who are also bereaved save me at times like these. Our bond is unique. They help me through it, but the best part of any holiday is when it is over.”

Barbara G.: “I could not go to the synagogue after Howie died. My husband Bruce went with my father. But after one year, he could not bear listening to the warnings of who would live and who would die. It was tearing him apart. He never went back.”

We try to outrun our grief, but it never works … . Grief always outruns us, particularly in the early years.

Rita: “It was just before Christmas and I was continually in fast forward, afraid to slow down, knowing that if I did, the pain would overtake me. I shopped, I wrapped, I shopped, I exchanged, I bought again, I ran, I wrapped, I collapsed, exhausted and too tired to think. I fit in a trip to the cemetery. I cared for my husband, Tom, who was having his own meltdown. I kept running, thinking if I ran fast enough, sickness and emotional pain could not catch me.

“I attended Christmas mass by myself and stood alone in a church filled
with intact families while shadows of my own life rose before me. Memory after memory bubbled to the surface as I replayed those joyous times. Now they are swords that pierce my soul. The ghosts of Christmases past came back to haunt me. I felt empty, alone and angry. What was it all for? Whose life was that? The mother, the me of that past life, was no longer me. She was calm, warm and soft. That person is gone forever and now unattainable. I am someone else today. I do not like her as much.”

No, we do not like the new people we have become as much as we liked the innocent people we were before. But we have to learn to accept our new selves, those changed, unsmiling on the inside new selves, who are always on guard, awaiting a possible new hurt. We have become vulnerable, fragile individuals. Those qualities now define us. Once we fully accept that reality our lives do become easier. We cannot undo what happened, we must make it part of our new lives.

Carol: “The first years, I spent a lot of time worrying about approaching anniversaries, birthdays, holidays, death days. I tried to think of different ways to get through. On Lisa’s birthday, I would ask my other daughters and Lisa’s husband, Craig, to meet me at the cemetery. I would donate blood.

“I agonized over not giving Lisa enough time as my life seemed to be going forth without her. After six years, I softened up on myself. I decided these days to me are no different from any other days. Every day I am without Lisa. I try not to pay special attention to any so-called special days.”

It is on these occasions when the world celebrates that we often sit down and achieve some solace by sending our thoughts to our children, be it in poetry or prose. Writing to and about our children is always a relief of pent-up emotions, but particularly so on those special days.

The First Thanksgiving

Today is Thanksgiving, Lord
And I don’t know what to say.
On June Fifteenth of this fractured year,
You took my son away.
Why should I be giving thanks?
It makes no sense to pray.
If You were listening to my prayers,
You would have let him stay.
I have wonderful friends and relatives, Lord,
Still, it’s very tough.
I love each and every one of them
And yet it’s not enough.
The pain is unbelievable,
It cuts right through my soul.
Although my family helps me cope,
We are no longer whole.
Could You send a sign, Lord,
That heaven does exist?
Is my child at peace in a better place,
Not cursed by You, but kissed?
I could give thanks once again,
If I knew he was safe and well,
And, in spite of the hole in my broken heart,
Survive this endless hell.

Madelaine Perri Kasden

Our children’s birthdays cannot help but become times of remembrance and reflection. In the beginning, we suffered as we anticipated such days. The countdown made us hyperventilate. We obsessed over how we would handle it.

Even with the passage of time, we need not consult a calendar to know that such a day looms ahead. Our bodies anticipate it for us. We tense up, we grow irritable, we feel depressed. Time blunts some of the more acute sensations, but still the old feelings flood back over us, and we are painfully aware that a day never to be forgotten is coming once again.

Lorenza: “Marc’s birthday was the day before Thanksgiving. He loved that holiday and he loved the traditional turkey leg. I always keep that image of him
sitting at the table, turkey leg in hand saying, ‘I’m king.’ On the first Thanksgiving after his death, I thought to bring a turkey leg to his grave, but then decided against it. Thank God Thanksgiving falls on a weekday, and it doesn’t have to be a three-day weekend. On Thanksgiving, many restaurants are closed, but still we do not eat at home. We go out to a movie, we go and eat pasta, anything to keep our minds occupied. It’s very painful.”

On our child’s birthday, we wrap ourselves in the warm memories that only a parent can know. We cannot escape these thoughts, so it is best to give in and bathe ourselves in them, even as we try to immerse ourselves in our work or our other responsibilities. We try to make the day pass as painlessly as possible by doing things our child enjoyed, such as shopping or eating a special food, perhaps going to some place they favored.

Barbara E.: “After the first year, we decided to celebrate Brian’s life by celebrating his birthday.”

Audrey: “Jessie’s second birthday after her death was the day we decided to celebrate her life by becoming godparents to two boys.”

As with a holiday, a child’s birthday is a good time to communicate with a deceased son or daughter. We write long notes by hand or on the computer to bring our children up to date on the family’s comings and goings. We tell them of our deepest thoughts and emotions and how we are faring without them.

A Birthday Message

I can’t call you on your birthday and sing Happy Birthday.
I can’t see your wish list so that I can buy you a gift.
I can’t give you a birthday hug and kiss.
I can’t celebrate with you.
I can visit you at the cemetery.
I can hurt and long for you.
I can think about you.
I can share my sadness with whoever calls.
I want to do what I cannot and not what I can.
I love you Andrea.
Happy Birthday

Ma (Phyllis Levine)

We find new ways to mark our own birthdays as well.

BOOK: Beyond Tears: Living After Losing a Child

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